1930s

In 1937, US et­y­mol­o­gist E F Kni­pling for the first time tried to con­trol in­sects by al­ter­ing their re­pro­duc­tive process. He ex­per­i­mented with the screw­worm fly by in­ject­ing them with chem­i­cals, thus ren­der­ing the in­sects ster­ile. Between late 1930s and early 1970s, sev­eral at­tempts were made glob­ally to de­velop GM mosquitoes. This led to sex-ra­tio dis­tor­tion